Dead Reckoning

Buy This Item Dead Reckoning by Sony Pictures  Available from Amazon  $19.98  on 11-16-2008     The shadow of World War II falls over this stateside film noir thriller about a GI paratrooper (Humphrey Bogart) who trails his AWOL war buddy to a treacherous city populated by gamblers, goons, pug cops, and the smoky, suspicious Lizabeth Scott, a seductive femme who may be fatale. Bogie's tight lipped, war hardened intensity dominates the B roster of supporting actors (Morris Carnovsky as a finicky nightclub owner with a gambling sideline, Marvin Miller as his brutal baby-faced thug) and the plot echoes with elements of earlier Bogie classics <I>The Big Sleep</I> and <I>The Maltese Falcon</I> recast on a low budget. Scott is, for all her fog-voiced sultriness, no Lauren Bacall, but her mannered performance is appropriately ambiguous and the film's cynical edge, ruthless desperation, and tarnished view of small-time hoodlums with big dreams casts a darker shadow unique to Hollywood's postwar funk. <I>--Sean Axmaker</I> Reader Reviews Dead Reckoning will be enjoyed by any Bogart fan, though it's not one of his best films. Very nice to see his friendly enthusiasm with another character toward the beginning of the film, and that moment where he (almost)lets himself fall in love with the femme fatale near the end. I was fascinated by several instances where the writers directly lift dialog or scenes from Bogart's earlier films with Bacall and also from the closing scene of the Maltese Falcon. The film is not a parody, but it's borrowing so directly from others gives it a very interesting sense of deja vu, and makes the viewer wonder exactly what they were up to in doing this. I hadn't heard of the film before, so was very pleased to discover another film by Bogart many years after first watching his films on my little black and white set on Five All Night, Boston's first all-night station way back when!

Dead Reckoning Available from Amazon Price: $19.98 Updated on 11-16-2008.

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